Nancy Nkumsah: Breaking Walls, Building An Education

Breaking Walls, Building an Education
It has long been accepted that the United States educational system can be one of exclusion and social disjunction among students. While it has been questioned whether some institutional aspects, such as standardized tests, are discriminatory, there is often social partitions among students that are not created through the educational system alone. These partitions may originate for a variety of reasons and from a variety of sources, such as home or cultural influences, peer influences, or societal conceptions. Whether institutionally based or not, practically all students will face some form of discrimination or social disjunction during their educational career.
As a six year old living in Bronx New York, Nancy Nkumsah was responsible for not only attending elementary school and completing the “average” educational undertakings of a six year old, but also with the task of learning and perfecting the English language. Nancy was born in Ghana, where she lived for the first five years of her life and had little contact with the English language. Despite her heritage and language barriers, Nancy never conceived herself as being different from the other students. This all changed when her classmates discovered her African heritage. Nancy distinctly remembers it …show more content…
This socio-cognitive theory examines why students seek to achieve their goals. This goal orientation is made up of two types of objectives, core goals and proximal goals. Core goals are those which a student may be attempting to achieve over a long period, so for Nancy a proximal goal would be her doctorate degree, which she desired to achieve from a young age. A proximal goal would be a short-term degree that would assist in the achievement of a core goal, in Nancy’s case a proximal goal was acceptance into a respectable undergraduate university